Given all the license restrictions roaming the music industry, few Web site owners are willing to integrate tracks into their pages. But Spotify just made it much easier to do so.

The streaming company today launched the Spotify Play Button, a service that enables Web site owners or bloggers to integrate a song, album, or playlist into their site. Spotify said it will allow Web site owners to embed the player for free and will take care of paying the artists on its own.

"You want to give your fans access to any song, album or playlist of your choosing and in its entirety, while ensuring people stay glued to your site," Spotify chief product officer Gustav Söderström said today in a statement. "The Spotify Play Button does all of this for free, while making sure artists get paid for every play."

In order to use the Spotify Play Button, a Web site's visitor must be a Spotify user. When I tried playing tracks embedded into sites, it asked to open Spotify on the desktop. From there, the song played. According to Spotify, the desktop application "powers the button in the background."

Spotify's Play Button has already been integrated into a host of Web sites, including the Huffington Post and Entertainment Weekly. In addition, the button is fully integrated into the Tumblr dashboard, so folks who want to share a track can simply input a song or album, and the microblogging service will automatically create a widget to be placed into a theme.

In order to embed a song, album, or playlist into their site, owners must first right click on what they want to share and copy the URL. From there, they can simply paste the code into the company's button generator, which then tosses out an embed code. The embed generator allows users to modify its size, theme, and whether a list or cover art is viewable.

About the author

Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has covered everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Besides his work with CNET, Don's work has been featured in a variety of other publications including PC World and a host of Ziff-Davis publications.
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